Edmonton, AB

Park # 148

What I Remember

I remember thinking that Edmonton was as far north as I had ever been, though in later reflection, I believe that a trip to Inverness in Scotland when I was a kid was actually farther north. Regardless, heading another 185 miles north of Calgary felt pretty remote.

The city, however, was big. Like Calgary it had grown up in Alberta’s oil boom and the downtown skyline had the requisite skyscrapers. John Ducey Park, though, was a throwback. I said in the newspaper interview I did that night that it reminded me of Fenway. There was no Green Monster, of course, and the park was much smaller. But it felt like part of the city in the same way Fenway did in Boston. Alas, John Ducey park closed a few seasons later and when I came back in 2003, for one of the last seasons of pro ball in Edmonton, it was at new Telus Field on the same site.

Stop 148 was also notable because it brought us within 30 parks of finishing and the trip seemed suddenly to be almost over. There were weeks to go but only a handful of minor league parks remained and we were both sad about that. Oh yeah, it was also my birthday. I turned 28, thirty years ago today, which is amazing since I’m now only 29.

The Games

Calgary Cannons 8 Edmonton Trappers 2

The Box

A Note about this Site

This site is intended to be a companion to the upcoming book In League with America. Although some games were particularly notable and will appear in the book, most of the results of the 199 games we saw over the course of the 1991 season will not. Our journey was never really intended to be at the games themselves, it was about the places we saw and the people we met along the way.

However, there is now an historic nature to the results from this season. All of the players we saw then, even in the minors, have long since retired. Some of the players we saw at Class A are now members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. These pages, then, will function as kind of a digital appendix with a brief recollection of each day, the result of the game(s) we saw that day and a map of our daily drive.